This application relates to hand-held styling appliances. More particularly, the present application relates to bayonet fasteners for providing improved assembly of hand-held hair styling appliances, including the removable attachment of combs and brushes to the appliance.
Heretofore, appliances for drying and styling human hair have generally included an air blower and a heater assembly positioned downstream thereof which, when combined, direct a hot air stream to the user's hair. Additionally, in hair styling and drying appliances which are adapted to be hand-held, a comb, brush, or other hair manipulation device is conventionally added to the appliance to aid in styling a user's hair while drying same. Originally, conventional hand-held dryers utilized radial flow fans therein. These hair dryers, usually including metal bodies, were heavy, cumbersome, and expensive to the point where their use was largely limited to professional hairdressers.
More recently, the use of transverse flow fans in hair dryers and stylers together with molded plastic bodies for same have allowed such appliances to be made relatively inexpensively, thus bringing the hand-held hair styler into fairly widespread consumer use. In transverse flow hair stylers, the air flow is directed across the fan blades generally perpendicular to the axis of fan rotation. In this type of hair styler, rather complex shaped molded plastic bodies have been utilized. The fasteners utilized to assemble the body parts have included screws together with molded screw receiving posts, numerous molded indent-detent type fasteners positioned around the parting line of the molded pieces, and other types of snap fasteners and the like. With the transverse fan appliance, a handle portion of the body is conventionally positioned to extend along the axis of the fan away from the general direction of air flow through the fan. Also, appliances utilizing transverse flow fans conventionally have an elongate rectangular air outlet duct for which special combs and brushes have been developed. These combs and brushes are generally equipped with molded snap fasteners for retention in mounted position on the outlet duct, or they have also been slidably retained in tongue and groove relation on the outlet duct.
The latest type of hand-held hair styler has incorporated the use of an axial flow fan therein. The use of axial flow fans in such appliances allows the fan, motor, and heating element to be positioned in a generally circular cross-sectioned tubular body. The body may enclose the fan, motor, and heating element much as a nacelle encloses the fan blades and motor of a jet aircraft engine. The use of a generally tubular appliance body also allows the elimination of a heretofore conventional handle, as a user's hand can conveniently grasp the tubular body of the appliance.
Additionally, with the use of tubular appliance body portions, conventionally made of high impact heat resistant plastic, the rather complex indent-detent fasteners, snap-on retainers, and other types of fasteners utilized for assembling the relatively complex curved body panels of transverse flow fans is eliminated.
Therefore, a need has arisen for providing a simplified and improved fastener for easing the assembly of the molded body panels of a hand-held hair styling appliance.
Further, a need has arisen for providing improved and simplified fasteners for removably attaching combs, brushes and the like to a hand-held hair styling appliance.
Accordingly, it is a general object of the present invention to provide improved means for fastening together the body panels of a hand-held hair styling appliance.
A more specific object of the present invention is the provision in a hair styling appliance wherein an annular hot air output duct of the appliance and a comb or brush attached thereto for styling a user's hair include improved means for being removably fastened together.
Another object of the present invention is the provision of improved bayonet-type fasteners between substantially annular end surfaces of the body panels of a hand-held hair styling appliance.